Fading Shades
by Quaeitur
Summary: A series of one shots focusing on minor characters, their families, unseen and departed characters, and colors. Open to requests. Chapters so far: Dash's mother, Elliot's past, Paulina's sister, Vlad's family, Tucker's (half?) brother, Jack's parents, Maddie's father, Sam's siblings, Star, Valerie's mother, Maddie's mother, and Kwan's father.
1. Orange

**Author's Note:** To help me break out of my original-fiction writing slump, I'm doing this. Suggestions for characters you'd like to see explored, even ones not appearing in the show, are welcome. As it stands there's room for this to be a lengthy series, but I live to please. Let me know if the past-current tense mix worked or didn't; I'm experimenting a bit here. Hitting up all the colors on LJ's challenge list, too. And then some, if need be.

* * *

Dash can't identify a dandelion from a rose. But he can always remember what orange arum lilies are.

He sets them down almost gingerly by the tombstone, kneeling down on the ground beside it. The flowers are tied with dark orange ribbons. This time of year the ribbons blur into the fallen leaves of autumn. Orange petals stand out, like the thick old sweater she wore around the house. Dash's mother had been a woman of contradictions, with a petite, flat chested profile, taller than her husband and eternally clad in baggy clothes around the house. She was always in that orange sweater, lounging on the couch to watch soap operas or football.

Her blonde hair was never put up when she was at home; it fell freely to her hips, and he had played with it as she held him, watching TV together or talking about his day. When it was fall she'd make big leaf piles for them to jump into. Her hair caught leaves and twigs like a net, and there would be a good twenty minutes of picking them out later, but she belonged outside. She was like a flower out there, orange and blonde and wrapped in leaves, laughing a quiet little laugh that made his father's eyes go soft.

She was a good mother and a better police officer. She was swift and agile and moved like liquid, a blur of motion, a uniform and a gun. Like an apparition, she appeared before people, and took them in. Dash was proud of her every single day of his life. He was proud of her when she put her hair up with a few plastic orange-brown haircombs and tucked it under her hat, when she came to school when he was in kindergarten to talk to the class, when she emerged from his parents' room in casual clothes to bake white chocolate chip cookies with him. She was harsh and gentle, bigger than life and plain, as constant as the tide.

He reaches out and touches her tombstone. He needs no rock to tell him the day his mother was shot.

That was the day he found out that red blood diluted to sickly orange in the rain. The day he realized that she was too good for this world. Maybe there were flaws to her he didn't see, or get to see. Maybe she would've hated how he turned out, one of the bullies she warned people about, but he would never know. He would never get to see her get misty eyed at his prom dates or cheer at his big games or tell him what to do when he messed up. When he dropped his backpack by the door, he still could shut his eyes and hear her tell him to pick it up, envision her lounging on the couch, gray pants and oversized sweater, curled up by the TV. In the fall it was the sharpest, most painful sensation he knew. He could smell her, pine scented cleaners and leaves.

Dash doesn't cry anymore. It doesn't scratch the surface of what goes on inside him when he sees her pictures or comes here. He has to come, though. His father won't. His father refuses to acknowledge the woman's existence, threw out every picture, every possession of hers, until there was only what Dash hid under his bed. And the soap operas, and football, which never really changed. These were the things he hung onto then and does now. He can't let himself just forget her. She was his world, she shaped him into who he was, and he never even got to tell her how much it meant to him, never got to be old enough to articulate everything she was.

Her name was Blythe Dash nee Wakefield, she liked sweets and football and fall, and she's still his mother, even if she's not here to see him through life. When he sees Phantom, once, he tries to ask about getting a message to her and is informed she's not a ghost. It's comforting, soothing. She's moved on. She's in Heaven, not trapped in some in-between state forever, yet some guilty part of him would've liked to just get one last word in. Dash gets up, leaving her favorite flowers behind, recognizable in their funny shape, and shuts his eyes briefly, hoping she can hear him.

_I love you, Mom._


	2. Monochrome

**AN:** Thank you to Super Berry, my apparently near-ish neighbor and quickest reviewer ever. Also, I apologize that this is technically cheating since it doesn't involve colors.

* * *

Elliot hates color as a whole.

It's a little known fact that while many are born colorblind, a sufficiently bad enough dose of brain damage could wipe out the mind's ability to process color. He remembers it, and that's something he's sure he'll never get sympathy for. It doesn't sound like a big thing. He's living, his hair grew back, he got out with minimal scarring, so why complain? It's as simple as the fact that he dreams in color and wakes up to a world washed out into nothingness.

He has to eat things without looking at them. The lack of how taste and sight match up leaves him feeling sick. He dropped out of art after it happened, and would have burned all his paintings had his mother not stopped him. That was when the moving around began, shuffling from one relative to another in the hopes one of them could fix a world so broken he wished he were truly blind just to get away from it. He's alright some days, can even make it through all his classes, but he can't be Elliot anymore. Elliot was a promising young artist in Washington. And in his mind, Elliot died right alongside the man who brought down this curse on what remained: his father.

His father had been driving drunk and now Elliot's life was effectively over.

His father had gotten off with a DUI and a broken collarbone. His lawyer had the first point nixed and he simply healed. But his son, who had taken the brunt of the impact, spent three months in a coma, barely hanging onto life. He awoke with six broken ribs, a fractured skull, and so much pain no painkillers could dull it. Yet even when they upped every painkiller, he kept crying, blurring out a world of gray, black and white, a place he didn't recognize or understand. The world had been drained of vibrancy.

He takes up new identities with each move. New excuses for his scars, new names, accents, backgrounds. He extorts his father for every last dollar, gets everything he wants, and there's a hole inside him that will never fill n matter what games he gets or who he's pretending to be. But if he makes himself believe he's a person who's never seen color or held a paint brush, if he keeps taking the painkillers he doesn't need, he can make it all go away for days. Weeks, even, before he picks up another identity, worrying his family as everything Elliot crumbles like a stone in the sea beaten by the waves of time.

By the time he gets to Sam he barely even remembers he was someone else. So long as he wears shades, and doesn't look at what he eats, and keeps himself busy, it feels like he's living, not just alive. Goth culture suits him, keeps him looking like it's all deliberate. His tye-dye shirts are all in trash bags, his mirrors are all covered, and he fears sleep. In sleep his defenseless nature overwhelms him, reminds him who he is until he wakes up, running to go throw up until his throat and stomach burn with hollowness. He lays his head on the cold toilet seat and tries to make himself believe that color isn't real and it's all in his head.

Pictures of his father are impossible to even contemplate. The last time he saw one, he burned it. Indoors. He couldn't help it, didn't care that it burned his fingers. He stared at the hurting skin and remembered red when he could only see gray; it was like hearing music in his head while an unheard symphony played nearby. After Amity Park comes the next place to try to find something real, and after that there will be another. He will make someone real he can step into, put paint back on the canvas on his existence, because otherwise he will shoot himself through the head.

He hates color, because he loves it so much he is simply no longer here without it.


	3. Pink

Pink was the color of everything Paulina's sister wore.

Well, not everything, but the older Sanchez sibling seemed to have an obsession with all shades of it, from magenta to pale rose, paired with anything from jeans to more pink or even white and black. She wore layers and layers, two skirts with two shirts and arm warmers and bright pink bracelets and two layers of socks. She was so bright their father jokingly held up his hand to shield himself from her.

And of course she would laugh, because Estrella was nothing but laughter and smiles, she was a song composed of joy and energy, kinetic and blurry as she went about her life. She had many friends, and her sister was shy back then, Paulina just a little shadow following a pink leader. Estrella gave Paulina things – shirts, socks, hair curlers, anything she asked for – in an attempt to help her along towards her own confidence. Paulina was happy to have what her sister gave her, but skewed more towards organized fashion, magazines and advertisements.

Sometimes, despite the neon pink and white color scheme, despite the hair put up into a single bun over on the left side of her head, and despite the clicking of bracelets, Estrella stole make up for her sister. She was good at finding things and places where everyone's eyes were on the gangster girls and not her, and came home to sneak into her sister's room, with gifts aplenty. They were poor back then. Their mother gambled away all their money. Life was often dark and gloomy, but Estrella punctuated it by creating something from nothing, spending time with Paulina playing with make up and smiling. She taught her how to do her hair, she taught her how to match shades, and they tried to ignore the growing number of arguments between their parents.

Paulina collected pieces of Estrella, shirts and dresses she outgrew, and though she wore them differently, her sister always thought she was beautiful. Even though their mother had promised to do it, Estrella was the one who took her sister to get her ears pierced and held Paulina's hands while it happened. They walked home together after school every day until Paulina began to become popular with other people in her own class, something Estrella approved of. After all, they would always be able to talk about everything and anything at home, sitting beside each other on Estrella's bed, going over all the things that went on in their world.

Then their parents got divorced, and they were split apart. It was harder to tell who cried harder, whose make up ran more, but their last night together Estrella gave her a whole pile of clothes in pink. Some of it, she'd have to grow into. That wasn't the point. It was the fact that these were ties to her family that couldn't be broken that made them so valuable. They parted with promises to call every day. And at first, they did. On their matching pink phones, Estrella's covered with stickers of cartoons she was way too old for, they talked endlessly. It was as if they were clinging to each other to prevent the world from ending.

But Paulina became popular. Estrella had a group of friends who accepted her, in her oddities and loud clashing clothes and hyper activity. Paulina had a circle she hung with, cliques and levels of social tiers she climbed, and eventually the other girl just fell away, forgotten. Paulina let the calls go to voice mail again and again until they slowed, then stopped completely. By that time Paulina was a cheerleader, an A-lister, a girl who wouldn't give a girl like Estrella the time of day.

The pink in her closet lost all meaning, just another color in a world of them.


	4. Red

**AN:** I knew this chapter was coming, but I fought it so hard. I know Even Evil Has Loved Ones is a cliche so old it's practically a dead horse, but sometimes my plot bunnies and I don't see eye to eye. Sorry, guys.

* * *

Sometimes family wasn't blood related, it was purely those who cared. On that basis, a kind criminal named Sheridan had more of a right to be called Vlad's father than anyone else, living or dead. The fact of the matter was that Vlad's parents were a nightmare and a shadow while Sheridan was a creature of the night itself, who took him up in protective arms and hid him away from his father's wrath.

Sheridan was an unremarkable man, a touch short, thin, with his only distinguishing factor being a red scarf tied around his neck at all times. Later Vlad would learn it mean he was part of the Red Dragons, a local gang that ruled part of the city, later he'd learn this man robbed houses and ran numbers, but all he knew when he first met Sheridan was he was scared. His father had never hit him before, and the sting left one cheek red and swollen. Vlad had dashed out into the night at the kind of speed where everything rushed past in a blur, and kept going, a hysterical, sobbing mess, until he crashed into someone in an alley.

The next thing he knew someone was gently pressing snow against his cheek as he bawled like a baby. At six years old, he was far too old for such things. Sheridan told him to buck up as he listened, using swearwords Vlad had never even heard before to tell him that Vlad's father was awful and his mother should've said something. He asked the little boy where he lived only to get a fresh round of tears in response. Vlad didn't want to go back; who would? But it wasn't like Sheridan could just take the kid back to his apartment. This was a kid, not a stray dog. And so after some coaxing he guided Vlad back to his house, advising him to do one thing most kids didn't: once angry, _stay_ angry.

Vlad didn't take his advice. He did manage to find Sheridan with a friend after robbing a house when walking home from school a week later, one eye black and bruised. The white haired man swore, smacked his own face with his palm, then signaled for Vlad to get in the van. Sheridan's friend thought it was the most hilarious thing in the history of the world, and recounted to an impressionable young Vlad how they'd robbed this place blind in eleven minutes flat. Sheridan kept interjecting stealing wasn't cool, until egged on into recounting some of his own ventures as a younger thief, and then he was in on it too. They emptied the stuff out at their apartment and while his friend ditched the car, Sheridan took Vlad right to the hospital for his injuries. He wanted to make some kind of abuse charge stick or at least scare Vlad's father senseless.

The red bruises and scratches didn't stay, and neither did the charges. Sheridan did, however, and that was enough for Vlad.

It wasn't just that Vlad was now a witness to a crime. He was a child, a little boy lost and overwhelmed by a man bigger than him. Vlad was bright, almost too smart for his own good, just without an anchor in life. Adrift, it was easy to see he was shutting down. He fell within himself in public, into the vast silences and staring of a child abused. In the presence of Sheridan he seemed to wake up, taking in the gifts and sights and trips together with wide eyes and a big smile of wonder. He was in love with the idea of life outside his house, life without boundaries, where people could stand up for themselves. He practically worshipped the ground Sheridan walked on, and over the years began to crash at the gang member's apartment when things were too rough back home.

At that rate it shouldn't have been too long before a red scarf or bandanna found its' way around Vlad's own neck. He was destined to end up in a gang. Under anyone else's mentorship maybe he might have, but Sheridan was not normal. His hair was white from stress, his eyes black pools, hands calloused, arms baring a litany of scars, and he had a tight grip when he wrapped his arms around Vlad and told him not to get involved with any of these people. He was too bright for that. Vlad didn't believe he was any smarter than anyone else. He _did_ believe anything Sheridan said. And he said to keep fighting and stay angry, so Vlad tried to. He tried to believe he was worth something, he was worth the trouble Sheridan was going through of squirreling away money for college for Vlad and all the nights of pizza, Coke and bad cable movies. He felt worth it when he had his hair ruffled by Sheridan, that half-teasing gesture that came with a warm smile. He felt like he had a real father.

All it took to take Vlad from boy to man was Sheridan's murder. It was nothing personal, just a money murder, like anything else. But Vlad knew why Sheridan had enough money stashed up to even be a target: he had been keeping it for his 'kid', for the one person he took time to nurture instead of rob. They found the body by a walking path in a park, overlooking a river. His white hair had absorbed the vivid, searing red blood and retained it, the rain had made it pool, and the sight burned itself into Vlad's mind so deeply that then and there, he felt something inside break.

_Stay angry, Vlad, and keep fighting._

He could do that. He would. He'd make his own way to college and one day he would come back and _own_ this town, hunt down every possible suspect, be the rich man in a suit Sheridan assured him he would be. He had never wanted it before. Even when he lay at the feet of his father, shaking from being beaten, he'd never wanted to really destroy someone. He knew now what it meant to want revenge. Anger rushed into him like air. It taught him how to live, how to breathe, eat, how to feel without any real family left in this world. One day this was going to be the last thing some red bandanna wearing gangster saw before their life ended. He'd make sure of it.

First he had to get to college. Everything car related had been learned through Sheridan, and Sheridan had never been caught for anything major in the ten years Vlad knew him. So it should come as no surprise no one ever caught Vlad. The brakes on that red Jeep were cut like it was an accident, and the warm brown-red bricks of the college were staring down at him before he knew it.

_Keep fighting_, he thought to himself,_ and stay angry._

And yet, the world hadn't even gotten a glimpse of how angry Vlad could truly be.


	5. Black

**AN:** Thank you to Fluehatraya, who left some of the nicest, well-written reviews for each chapter that I've ever seen. I appreciate the vote of confidence even if I can't pronounce your username, but then again the same thing can probably be said of my username. Also, no I did not realize until afterwards that I used black for the African-American characters. Sorry. And yes, I consider Tucker minor enough for this, if only because he never gets any real focus in the series.

* * *

It may have been a fluke of genetics. It might have been, according to Alton, an act of Allah that was done to show him the value of love. Tucker would never get used to those words coming out of his brother (half brother, possibly half-brother) and coming out of that face, with those pointed features, plump nose, eyes almond shaped. His eyes took everything in with a warmth and lack of judgment that had closed the age gap between them. It didn't mean anything that Alton was ten years older than he was. They were best friends, even now that life had shoved everything it could inbetween the brothers. (Half- no, it didn't _matter_, but it _did-_)

Alton had black eyes. Not merely brown, pitch black, radiant and devourers of light, drawing eyes to his and people to him. His gaze was like an embrace. His hair lacked the fluffy texture of his parents (mother – _stop!_) and instead was soft and used to hang down to his chin. That was back when he lived at home.

Back then, Alton had called the house in Amity Park home. Now it was 'the house' at best.

There had always been an undercurrent of tension between Alton and his father, which bled over to his mother. (_Their_ father, Tucker meant.) Although as an oblivious little kid Tucker had never quite understood what the split was over, as he got older he knew exactly what it was about. With his caramel colored skin and pitch black eyes, he could have been anyone's son – but he wasn't likely to be the son of two teal eyed bistre skinned people with textured hair. Since they had videos of both of their births, there was no doubt Tucker and Alton were brothers and had the same mother. What was in question for a while was the other half.

Arguments had erupted when Alton was eighteen and hadn't stopped. He could take his father's awkward looks, the way he wouldn't lay a hand on his shoulder or hug him very often, he could endure being referred to as 'my wife's son', and yet one thing set him off in a way Tucker had never seen him set off. They had crept upstairs at the sound of yelling, hearing their father's voice rising more than it ever had, and then their mother had begun to cry. The yelling hadn't stopped. In a motion of fury, the older Foley sibling yanked the door open and stormed in, putting himself inbetween his parents physically, as if he could shield his mother from their father's words with his body, black eyes blazing.

"You have no right to talk to her like that! You hate me, you go to me!" Alton had snapped, stepping up to his father with intimidating, quiet tones in his voice, a serious solemn volume that denoted a storm inside. "Leave her out of it. If you need to make a woman cry to feel big, you're not fit to be _anyone's_ father."

Tucker's father had sworn at him and told him to get out, but Alton wouldn't leave without ushering his mother out. Once the subject had been broached, it couldn't be hidden again. Arguments between the two men became as regular as the sun, Alton calm and collected if via gritted teeth, his father a wreck, their mother always crying and always comforted by her children. She sobbed again and again that she hadn't had an affair, and they were both her precious baby boys, and they believed her. They loved her. Alton protected her as if it were his calling, he babysat his brother, he dutifully pushed through college, and he helped Tucker with his homework. He would not be banished from his own family life. He was part of this household, no matter how unwanted he was by his father.

That was when Alton had converted to Islam and found his real calling. He hadn't been particularly ashamed _or_ blatant about it, simply studying the Quran in the privacy of his room, abstaining from the usual beer he and his father had, and… calming down. Although he'd never been loud when arguing, he grew more and more at peace with the world around him. Alton Foley developed a calm that could weather storms big and small, often shutting his eyes, raising his hands and saying, "La hawla wala quwata illa billah." He would exit the room without further words, leaving his father fumbling. And he began to ask questions his father couldn't answer.

"Is this worth what you're showing your son?" he'd ask, with a nod of the head towards Tucker. "When he acts like this with his wife, is that going to be okay with you? When you die, is this how you want to be remembered?"

Eventually, when Tucker was ten and his brother was twenty, his brother stood up at dinner and announced he was going to leave to run a mosque in Canada. The reaction was explosive. Tucker's ears rang with his father's shouts, but Alton stood there, watching him, taking him in with those eyes that couldn't hold anger, refused to, and simply stepped around to the table to stand beside the other man. A tense silence fell over the room before the black eyed boy wrapped his arms around his father and pulled him in for a tight embrace, holding onto him and burying his face in the other man's shoulder. Tucker's father (their- oh, who _cared_) stared, unable to wrap his arms around his child in return as his eldest son thanked him for teaching him the values of patience and love, and told him he hoped Allah would soothe the pain in his heart.

"I love you, Dad," he said, his voice cracking, and Tucker's father had shoved him off. Alton's eyes were shiny, with tears or possibly emotion, it was never clear. "I love you. Rahimakallah."

Tucker's father turned to leave the room, but Alton grabbed him by the wrist.

"I had samples sent to a lab. Before I leave, you'll have your answer."

Their father left with a brief, "Thanks."

Nowadays Alton called back to talk to his mother and brother, but his father refused to take the phone. He refused to let Alton come back for visits with a mixture of fear and confusion for this strange imam of a mosque in another country who bore his name and little else. He tolerated the constant emailing back and forth Tucker and Alton did, accepted gifts for Muslim holidays, managed to grit his teeth and bare it when Alton married a woman named Zilal from Saudi Arabia, he just couldn't stand to be in the same room as the other man. They hadn't seen each other in person since Alton left for the airport years ago to become an imam, hugging his mother about six dozen times and telling Tucker to hold tight to his dreams of designing and inventing technology. They departed in silence, ultimately, the kind that comes with knowing.

Although Tucker had never seen it, the lines on the paternity test were dappled black – positive. And their (yes, _their_) father had to live with that, every day.


	6. Teal

**AN: **Thank you to my followers and those that have favorited this. I appreciate the support even though I must ask: why, as a fandom, have we not discussed or written about Danny's grandparents? Ever. I can't think of a fic with them in it. At all.

But anyway, to balance out the depression I thought I'd put something light hearted into this. And also explore what Danny's heritage might be. I honestly kind of want to write fic about Danny's grandparents, all four of whom I've got pictured in my head, wherein Danny time travels and meets them in their prime and gains perspective on how spoiled we are in this generation.

Anyway. Onto the fic!

* * *

Gideon Fenton was a lucky man.

He was someone who had always been poor, the kind of poor where his mother had scraped food off the plates at the diner she worked at into a bag and brought it home for her son. At age fourteen, she had given birth to Gideon Nicholas Fenton, who took his mother's surname when his father simply walked out on the family as if they were a radio program he didn't like and wanted to turn off. Gideon never learned the man's name, but he hated his father for doing this to his mother, for the one room shack they lived in and the days spent working from as far back as he could remember just to get by.

He grew up on work. He scrubbed floors, he raked leaves, he mowed lawns, he had a paper route, he took humiliating bets from other kids for a quarter. It was the 50's, a time of prosperity where kids like him were the lowest kind of person in the eyes of the booming middle class, and he threw himself into every job that came his way. He was never too proud to beg. He begged often and hard, held up every deal he made, knowing from the first day he accepted his first dare the value of a promise. Every coin was pulled together to keep the roof over their heads. There were no movies, no toys, no nice Sunday clothes, just an endless stream of work that stretched on and on until he was seventeen. His mother, unable to take the strain, simply passed on in her sleep – or so he thought until he found out she'd used some of the rent money for sleeping pills and followed it with vodka.

With no place to stay, he took up his mother's job and slept in the back of their broken 1923 Hudson, a car that kept him dry and little else, and held all his worldly possessions. Eventually he fixed it enough to get to Boston, where there were plenty of tasks to be done, and he began to amaze the people around him with his ability to fix things. He'd never considered it a talent, just one of the many things he did and services he offered, but he was good enough that he became a self made handy man and electrician. He worked from before sun up to well after sun up even when he had plenty of money for an apartment, chronic fear of being poor washing over him in waves. Sometimes he would be so scared that he couldn't breathe, threw up, had his knees give out under him, and he barely spent a penny on himself that wasn't absolutely necessary.

He was alive, but not really living, until a pair of teal eyes met his.

Her name was Jane Otsskonoapsspa, and she was Blackfoot. She was also the first human being in his entire life to show him any kindness. He had just been told that with the opening of a new technical school in Boston, real educated electricians were going to replace him, and his services weren't needed. He lost three customers in one day. He made it as far home as six blocks over before he crumbled, just sinking to his knees and shaking in fear and panic. Something else, he'd need to do something else but God he was tired of being humiliated, looked at as lower, inferior, always treated like he was nothing at all and he understood, he understood now why his mother had laid down and died and – and then someone was wrapping arms around him and pulling him to his feet.

She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, with rich teal eyes, black hair pulled back into a ponytail, real rich black unlike his, which had gray streaks in it despite him only being twenty one. Her skin was like mocha and her hands were gentle. She had the kindest voice he'd ever heard, so whisper soft he felt everything melt away. And just like that, he could breathe again.

They fell into conversation like they'd known each other their whole lives. She never judged him, never said he was stupid, uneducated, worthless, so he confessed he felt he was all those things and she refuted them one by one, layered on words until they pierced through to his heart, soothing wounds he didn't know he had. He loved her more than he knew he could. He had never really loved anyone before, not since his mother died, but Jane just disabled him with her calm and caring demeanor. She was as serious a person as he was, she just didn't let herself get mired down in depression, pushed onwards with all her heart.

Her hope was not despite the fact life was hard, it was because of it. She was not a wide eye idealist, she was just a fighter. Teal eyes flashed like waterfalls and her voice could soar like an eagle, and she did not take directions or commands, forming her own path instead of following another's. And though she saw him at his lowest, she felt nothing but respect for him. It was the basis of a love that was not passionate so much as it was an extension of himself, a deserved return for what she gave him. Her skin color barely registered in his mind.

They were married within the month, something so impulsive that had they had friends, it would have turned heads. Theirs was an unorthodox wedding, cheap and bizarre, with the bride all in teal and her husband in grays, letting her shine like the gem she was. He needed no reception or party to be happy. All he needed was the support of one person to raise him up out of the darkness and into the light. He had been working for so long it had overtaken his ability to function, turned him inhuman, an animal fighting to survive as if he were under attack. But like the cold water of a blue-green pond, he had abruptly found her, and learned how to swim through the currents of life again. Were a Jewish English American and a Catholic Blackfoot a good idea? No. They were going to make it not to spite that, but because of it. Because they were the same in so many ways, serious and devoted and hard working and human, humanly needy, in desperate want of affection and a presence to break the silence of loneliness – these were the reasons they would make it, together. On his own he would have died and she would have become like him. Together, they were counterbalances on the scale. As he leaned in to kiss his bride, he looked into her teal eyes and felt a peace in his soul there were not words for.

And he swore on that very day that no matter what their children wanted to do with their lives, no matter who they were, they would be loved, taken care of and encouraged, because without that life had not been truly alive.


	7. Purple

**AN:** I was all set to do a chapter about Tucker's mother and how she dealt with Alton's change of faith and her husband's issues, because Fluehatraya wanted more Alton and I take requests. Then this came to me and drove other ideas out until I did it. Maddie's parents have a weird origin, though this is mostly about her father. I really hope this doesn't come off as dark or depressing. I'm not trying to make it that, and I believe her parents loved her very much. I just also believe that a lot of kids go into what their parents were into, so... cue the longwinded chapter that acts as Maddie's father's lifestory.

Anyone have requests? I'll be on it if so.

* * *

Vincent Vankirk was predestined to be an unusual man.

His parents were German, and his father had returned to Germany from the United States in order to go forth and 'do what must be done for the motherland'. Or, to put it as bluntly as possible, he left his son and wife to go be a Nazi. He managed to send supplies and money back home under the current trade laws, but they weren't rich, and the first few years of Vincent's life passed with only his Mama and his Uncle Lukas. They were the ones who hid the news from him when his father fled to Argentina to avoid war crime charges, they were the ones who raised him, but they couldn't hide him from the fall out of WW2 on an innocent German American boy in the US. The war may have ended when he was ten, but the other kids still remembered.

Descent upon him was swift and ruthless. He never found out how the other kids knew his father was a Nazi, life became a rollercoaster. There were angry shouts, names he was called, kids doing a fake 'Heil Hitler' at him, and looks of disgust and even fear from some of the younger kids in his neighborhood. Teachers were harder on him than they were other kids, at recess no one played with him, and more than once his glasses were stolen or broken.

His purple eyes were exactly like his father's: unshakable, unreadable, expressionless blanks. Even as he smiled pleasantly and said hello to his tormentors, the message in his eyes was as blunt as it was real: _just go ahead and try me._

There was something about him that was unshakable. No amount of yelling, kicking, punching, or mean spirited trickery could get him to lose his cool. He was no fiery redhead, he was embers, a slow burn that did not go out no matter what happened. There were simply things that he was that he refused to change even subconsciously or on a day to day level. His silent stares were unnerving. When he spoke he timed his words from the time he discovered his ability to play piano onward, keeping a short, blunt cadence of words that held attention before halting. Vincent was not someone it was wise to bully. He would have a comeback that would do more emotional damage than it was worth to keep pursuing him. To have a fight with him was to take your reputation into your own hands, as the piano had taught him something else: soft notes rang loud. A simple whisper of a rumor to someone else could snowball, destroying the person who hurt him physically long after the bruise or blood nose was over.

He wasn't vicious. But he was unemotional. He let loose verbal warfare and watched the results without caring much about anyone who stepped in his path. If someone were to try to engage him about something, they'd find he had two passions: piano, and the supernatural. Though he grew up to be a fine concert pianist for several years, he spent those same years sneaking off at night to go look for ghosts and, after ten years of this, decided at twenty eight to turn his passion to the full time pursuit of ghosts. His mother fretted over him, her educated and dignified son pursuing such a 'silly' career, yet she loved him enough to simply leave him be. Changing the mind of Vincent Vankirk was like stopping the tide from rolling in.

There were ghost attacks, on what he referred to as 'the Lines'. Historical evidence found towns near bodies of water or on top of underground rivers to be most likely to be haunted. Using this and newspaper records as he travelled, looking through many an archive, he became the founding father of the science of ghost hunting. There was no discussing spirituality or religion with him; he kept his thoughts on those matters locked up tightly. If ghosts were to be tracked and studied they would need the help of the general public, of scientists who didn't believe old wives' tales. Nothing but pure science, provable patterns and facts would do. He charted the Lines of North America, he gathered books upon books of old tales and first hand accounts, he recorded over a hundred hours of interviews across three countries and thirty nine cities, in all three languages he spoke.

Vincent envisioned a government trained group, a task force, people who would work as relief and combat against ghosts in affected areas. They would help the people devastated by ghosts. In this vision and his passion in discussing it, his purple eyes lit up, his features animated and he came alive, voice losing the carefully calculated cadence he'd trained into it, replaced with passionate sincerity, a desperation and earnestness that defied everything anyone knew about him. He had built himself up as being as cold as the lavender tinted glaciers of the Arctic, but revealed himself in those rare moments to be as soft as the petals of a lilac flower. This want to keep people safe in spite of the ridicule a 'ghost hunter' like he received was what drew his wife to him in the first place.

He was twenty years her senior, a man most people found fascinating but ultimately unbearable, someone who could stare into the eyes of an attacking ghost without flinching or raising his voice. He was harsh and critical, never offered up praise, never relented on any point, and yet she loved him almost as if it were to spite him. Vincent could try every word in every language they both knew to cut her down without making a dent in her. His dispassionate nature protected him; her passionate one protected her. She was the fiery one, despite being short and pixie-featured, with feathery black hair and piercing blue eyes set to blazing while his purple ones stayed on cool. Determined to find something that would convince the government ghosts were important enough to invest time and money in, he began to plan a trip.

If water, ice and underground liquid, combined with certain longitudes, meant ghosts were more likely to appear, that meant the most haunted place on the face of the Earth was in Canada's northern territories, up past what would one day be called Nunavut, in the wilds far north where islands held no name outside of Inuktitut and the sun went missing for months at a stretch. With sixty four people, himself and the infuriating blue eyed Jaclyn DeLage, they made off for an island far up north known only as Quittinirpaaq, the place on top of the world. It was where Greenland and Canada touched, a place of rock and ice where even caribou and polar bears rarely ventured. It was a land of absolutes. In this place there were many streams and an abundance of water, places where ghost Lines intersected, and the Inuit people begged them every step of the way not to go on. Past the Inuit port of Iqaluit, only one Inuit guide would take them, for an obscene amount of money, and they had to find their own way back. Vincent remained as steadfast as ever. This had to be done.

They returned four months after they were supposed to, with five people, two of whom were badly injured.

Every shred of collected evidence – and there was more than they could properly carry with more awaiting any brave souls who would venture up there – was confiscated by the government. It was only when they received a large chunk of hollowed pietersite that could contain and release and recontain a ghost that the true horror of what ghosts could be was realized. When they released it, it was only seven civilian casualties and a hellish night later it was recontained. The government of the United States heard him out at last, all his evidence, the books, the recordings, the old and new, the theories and scientific evidence. But Vincent's hair was streaked with white, his voice often faltering, soft as if it had gone raw from screaming. He left the arguing to his still passionate best friend, Jaclyn, who he referred to with uncharacteristic affection as Jackie. They held hands for most of the discussions and meetings with officials until finally an agreement was made to form the organization Vincent had long lobbied for. He suggested their primary color be white, in 'honor' of the whiteness of the bleak place that had brought the danger's apparancy to the world.

By that point, however, Vincent had to wave off running the organization. Jackie, he explained, was two months pregnant. They needed to start a family. And so while his peers tried to wrap their mind around the whirlwind of events that had brought them together, they were married on his forty second birthday. They took a substantial damages settlement from the government, and relocated to a place where snow was only present briefly, settling in to have their beautiful baby girl.

Purple eyed and curious, she would often sit by the fireside in their living room as he played eerie, otherworldly tunes on his piano long into the night, and read his old journals from the days of Quittinirpaaq, forming her own opinions on ghosts.


	8. Silver

**AN: **Ask and you shall receive! Thank you to my reviewers, you make life a bit brighter.

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Sam was the youngest of five children. She was not, as was often thought, an only child. She just had the fortune of being young enough to have nobody know the eclectic group.

Northfield was the oldest of the Manson siblings and, as far as Sam was considered, someone five times more far gone than the rest. Northfield was the corporate sell out young up and comer winner of Entrepreneur of the Year brother she could not agree with from a purely ethical point of view. He radiated sleaze from those piercing cerulean eyes. Since he had their father wrapped around his little finger, getting the company after their grandfather died had been easy, and he ran the riches of the Manson family from a cushy apartment in Manhattan, swinging by only for a few days when he could spare it but always making time for calls from his mother. He was a man who always wore his Bluetooth headset, the color clashing with his bright orange-red hair. He was already set up with his own wife and two daughters, Penelope and Pammy, who Sam had to begrudgingly admit she loved. They were shy little girls with big brains whose father doted on them like they were the sun and moon. They even had matching silver sun and moon bracelets, in solid silver metal with real gem highlights.

When Northfield's wife had been in a hit and run accident by a silver sedan, he'd come over for two weeks and basically let his daughters' care rest in his parents' hands. Fourteen year old Sam had been as nice to him as she could. Even corporate sell outs had hearts to be broken. Unfortunately, she didn't have much to say to a thirty year old man mourning his wife; she'd never been in that kind of place before emotionally. All she could do was give him _Embraced By The Light_ by Eide and hope reading it helped. The first by his side, however, had been Richard, the middle child. He was working as a general practice doctor while living with his boyfriend in Minneapolis, but appeared at Northfield's doorstep like he'd been summoned by lightning within three hours of getting a call from him. Twenty nine and lanky, with silver rimmed glasses and never-quite-flat feathery blonde hair, he was drawn to all mourning or hurting family members like a moth to a flame. His big teal eyes were like his mother's just as Northfield's eyes were like their father's, and though night and day opposites, they were the best of friends from having been the oldest alongside each other.

Then there was Morgan. The raven haired boy had simply sent Penelope and Pammy whole photo albums of their parents, from the dating days in high school to their opulent wedding. Northfield wasn't sure to shoot his brother or thank him. Since Morgan was firmly located in Seattle, it was impossible to do either, but it was exactly the kind of thing that Morgan Manson specialized in, his trademark I-love-you-from-waaaay-over-here attitude displayed through actions. Morgan, at the ripe old age of twenty eight, was plowing through his Masters in Art and a Bachelor's Degree in Education at the same time, living his life doing nothing but school work, political protests and constant intellectual debates. He lived his life in art galleries and anti-establishment rallies. Sam rarely saw him, but it wasn't Morgan's choice. He wanted to be part of the family more, he just couldn't take the favoritism going on that divided their family. After all, he was using the family money to fund his actual dream, and unlike Richard, wasn't going after a 'practical' profession.

Cornel, the second youngest, was twenty four. He was in essence the one everybody got along with. After all, Cornel was both a lawyer and insanely likable. While Northfield couldn't stand Morgan, Richard barely tolerated their mother and vie versa, Morgan endured their parents like a dental appointment and Sam had issues with both her parents, everybody loved Cornel. He was the kind of idealist who was passionate and hardcore about his values, filled with love for all people, accepting of all things and willing to take impossible cases. He fought tooth and nail as a lawyer for his clients, desperate to get justice for them no matter how hopeless things looked at the time. He didn't just see silver linings, he _made_ silver linings where there were none. It was hard to hate someone like that.

Hanukkah was an interesting one the year Sam turned fifteen. Her birthday fell in the middle of it, so she invited Danny and Tucker, which turned into just Danny when Tucker's family decided to go visit Tucker's brother and sister in law, who had just had their own baby boy named Eisa.

Danny walked in to a sea of laughter, all revolving around a debate Cornel had done in college in defense of bees. Yes, bees. There had been a debate team face off on ridiculous questions, and this was the crowner. Cornel had fought hard for the rights of bees to be treated like any other animal. Northfield and Richard were in tears with how seriously Cornel still took the debate. Richard kept objecting and the retorts had the richest, oldest Manson sibling doubled over on the couch, laughing hysterically. In the kitchen, Sam's mother was ruling over her husband with an iron fist as they cooked. By the fire, Penelope and Pammy were playing with Tarot cards given to them by their Uncle Morgan. Richard's boyfriend was busy being lectured by Sam's grandmother on how to properly celebrate a Hanukkah, and was taking notes on a notepad while asking questions every so often.

"So, um," Sam said sheepishly, "This is most of them. What'd you think?"

Before Danny could get a word in, the door opened without being knocked on and Morgan appeared, black-clad and overly stylized. Unannounced and unapologetic, he handed overjoyed nieces his pet raven in a glided silver cage, advising them to be gentle to the poor bird after such a long flight. Pammy got bread for it from the kitchen while Penelope stroked the bird's feathers, and they retreated back to by the fire while Sam squealed and hugged her older brother, complimenting him on his stylized eyeliner.

"I think you fit in perfectly here," Danny deadpanned to Sam, as Morgan handed her a sheet covered, smaller cage of her own. Two peeps sounded inside it as Sam pulled the sheet back, looking at a little black bird with fluffy silver down. "What're you going to name him?"

"Silvius." Her smile grew wider. "And she's a girl."


	9. Yellow

**AN:** Wow, so that was an amazing and much appreciated flood of reviews I hadn't been expecting. Thank you to everyone! I really can't put into words what the flurry of support and compliments for my ideas mean to me, especially when I know there's so many great and better writers in this section and on the site. I thank you for your continued support. As always, prompts are always welcome. (And there's a smidge of Kwan/Star in here. Just a smidge.)

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Star's mother was the coolest mom in the world.

She gave her kids names like Haven, Star and River. She braided Star's hair, let River dye his hair blue, and always had snacks ready. She was a seamstress, selling custom made dresses and skirts online, while her husband worked as an elementary school teacher. They made a modest income, but anything Star wanted was made up for in all those moments she had with her mom that other girls didn't seem to. While everyone else was fighting with their mother, Star hugged her every day when she got home. Her mother was like the sun, cheerful and warm, soft blonde hair and the smell of the ground after it rained.

Her mom had such vivid blonde hair that as a baby, Star had called it yellow. Haven had tried to correct his little sister until she started referring to his hair as dandelion and cut his losses before she came up with anything more embarrassing. But Star's mother wasn't embarrassed. She always laughed, picking her daughter up to cuddle her close, asking her what she wanted to do today. They had done it all together over the years – made food, colored, sang, cleaned, danced, run errands, and most of all read stories. Star's mother was a fountain of story books and fairy tales, some of which she knew from memory.

Little rhymes and long tales worked their way into Star's life. Where other kids grew up on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Sailor Moon, Star remembered The Brothers Grimm (especially The Golden Children) and Ku and 'Ulu Tree. She couldn't recall what Pokemon was about, but she could recite most of How Maui Slowed The Sun from memory. Star's memories of her mother were yellow hair and yellow skirts, pastel yellow dining room and banana and peanut butter sandwiches with honey, the smiles of a woman who gave everything she had to offer to her children. She made Star's every dress for each school dance and wove ribbons into her hair like something out of a story. She was always there for her children, like the sun itself.

It was a long time before Star realized it, but she loved her mother more fiercely than anything. More than shopping, more than Paulina, more than the A-list, and she proved it one day in the cafeteria, cutting through her best friend's gossiping voice. Paulina was giggling about the new transfer student on the cheerleading team being into witchcraft or something, and that struck a raw nerve in Star. She narrowed her turquoise eyes and turned her head sharply, frowning.

"She might just be pagan or Wiccan or whatever, Paulina," Star said in a 'you are an idiot' tone of voice. "Quit acting like she rides a broom or something."

"Even if she is, that'd be weird. I mean, she'd probably, like, dunk her cheerleading outfit in goat's blood or something before practice," the Latina snorted, getting laughter from the entire table except for Kwan and Star. Kwan looked at his girlfriend with questioning eyes, but before he could defend her or the new girl, she did it herself.

"My mother is pagan and so am I," Star said loudly enough to silence several tables. "So what, I'm okay but the _black_ pagan isn't?"

Several jaws dropped. Kwan gazed at her in a way that said 'this is why we're dating'. Paulina flushed and stammed.

"You know what, I'll be right back. I'm going to go talk to the Coach about this." She shoved her tray aside and strode towards the door. She didn't have to shut her eyes to remember singing to the moon or celebrating Yule, her mother's smiling, rounded face framed by yellow hair, her dark blue eyes bottomless in their love. Star paused at the doorway of the cafeteria and turned to look back at Paulina.

The other girl snapped, "I'm, like, waiting for an apology."

"So am I."

Star started wearing her pentagram to school after that, the one her mother had bought just before finding out she was pregnant with Star; it was gold with a yellow marble bead in the center.


	10. Gray

**AN: **This is something of an awkward chapter for me. It came to me in a dream and was much more poetic and beautiful there than it is here. But anyway, I'd like to remind people requests are always open and thank everyone for their reviews and encouragement.

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She lived life in a haze of gray.

As someone whose interests had always skewed towards the paranormal, it was hard to give it up for the sake of a normal job, a nine to five regular chunk of life. Doing so was giving up her passion, what she loved and treasured, but then she found her other love, a love that involved the unknown. She needed the unknown, needed to be the first person to uncover things, discover them, hold secrets in her heart that she could carry around. Valerie's mother was a woman with a child's wonder in her mind, keeping a sense of awe and amazement for the universe and the wonders of the world long after other people quit caring.

Gray was the night that she went out into as a little girl, scaring her parents every time, exploring the dark moon-lit alleys of the world. She came back with things, a drum set, a fish toy, a length of sparkling glitter cloth, and called them her treasures. She was treasure hunting. As a child she got bored with her birth name and began working on changing it, going through books and writing things down. These, too, were discoveries, to be presented to a largely uncaring world with the same enthusiasm as if the news was being applauded. You could not break her self esteem, for it was based in the beauty of life, and when people are that disconnected from the mundane side of reality they might as well be speaking Swahili and you only English.

Pitch black was her hair, which she experimented with in high school, putting it up in myriad styles, imagining herself as a great paranormal investigator. When the Quttinirpaaq files were leaked to the public, she read them and went out into cold winter nights with her hair in practical buns and in stark but warm gray clothing, imagining herself in that desolate far flung nowhere, alone amongst the ice, working to save lives. Just as every living survivor of the Incident at Quttinirpaaq had taken their names off the record, she would, too, slinking away into civilian life like a gray shadow in the mist. Her world of imagination was overwhelming, blinding her to the horrors of things, but it was this same charm that drew her husband to her.

His last name was Gray.

She met him in a coffee house where she was working her way through college, hair done up into a side bun with real flowers stuck in it, bright green eyes shining. When she handed him his coffee she'd written her number on the side of it, blunt and forward and smiling. He had gaped at her but called her a week later, shy and stammering but brought forward by her vivid nature. This same vivid nature would eventually lead to her death, even though she tried everything she could to be normal. She went to a normal college, she got married, and had a baby girl she loved more than life itself, but the urge to explore, to go out into the vast great gray areas, was deeply embedded in her.

So she dove into a degree in linguistics, learning how to decode languages without clues or keys, and went off with a small corporation to reach out to the most remote parts of Africa. In her mind the entire human race was one big family, and it was her job to go out and help her brothers and sisters. And what better way to help them than to make their voices heard? She didn't want to preach religion or shove food at them, she wanted to go beyond that, make them able to stand up and voice their complaints and grievances, teach their values and speak to the world as a whole. They were the great unknown only because more people hadn't reached out to them. When she graduated she was out of the States by the end of the week, enthusiasm radiating from her, keeping the darkness and fear of the unknown away from her mind, keeping her under the delusion the world was made of grays and whites, with no evil to be found in her fellow humans.

That was her last great discovery, which came as a shock after three months of solid work abroad. She was living her dream. She saw the sun set in a cool toned red over the gray glory of lakes, she saw the paleness of dewdrops on fields of vast wilderness, she held in her heart a love for the world so profound it sometimes made her cry. In her tears she was smiling, and would wave off confused and concerned people, explaining only sometimes how profound the vast perfection of life was. These were the thoughts that still stayed in her mind while she lay dying – she was in shock from blood loss, and couldn't deny that the red soaking through her gray tank top was preciously beautiful, as loud as a flare, warm and wonderful.

The fact that she was one of the victims of the opening shots of a political upheaval never occurred to her. She was too busy staring in amazement at the gray dots dancing through her vision, which then overcame her in a gray glow so familiar it could only be called home.


	11. Blue

**AN:** I'm not dead, real life just got crazy for a bit. We will now return to our regular updating schedule, I promise. As always, thank you to the reviewers and remember, requests are always open.

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Jaclyn DeLage was a woman with fire in her blue eyes.

She did not live an orthodox life or have any particular desire to. She went into ghost hunting despite the disapproval of her conservative parents, and despite the fact they would have spoiled her with anything else she requested. They were doting, they were sweet, they were saccharine in their treatment of their baby girl. For her they would have done anything, given her anything within their power to buy, gotten her a tutor for anything she wanted to learn, and let her live a life of luxury. There was only one thing that was forbidden to Jaclyn: freedom, the freedom to fail, to fall, to make real choices, to be her own person. They fought fiercely with her, but in the end she ran off.

She didn't run off to find love, it just so happened she met a man who cut her no slack whatsoever and that was wonderful to her. He didn't treat her as delicate, he didn't give her any special treatment for being female, and he didn't seem to care about any one person more than another. He called her Jackie as a derogatory term and she took it up with a pride that baffled him utterly. His name was Vincent, and he was cold as she was on hot, but she knew deep down he had a passion for his projects. She wouldn't have followed him to the top of the world otherwise.

It was their arguments that made her love him, because no matter what he said, if he argued he cared. Anger, to her, wasn't the sign of a bad person or an immature person. Anger was passion, it was disdain for what was wrong, it was the fuel to standing up for what you believed in. To her, every insult people threw at her was taken as a sign they gave a damn about her and wanted her to make it out of the ghost hunting field alive. Though talented and intuitive, she was new. She was easily far and away the youngest person on Vincent's team, and many questioned the logic of letting the pixie-haired spitfire onto their team at all. Jaclyn relished having a chance to prove herself, and people to prove herself to. She wanted to show the world she wasn't just a spoiled kid, she was a serious ghost hunter, and after four hours of yelling, talking and trading barbs with Vincent, she eventually wore him down. He let her on the team and she jumped forward to hug him. Given he'd just told her she would at least be useful as a pack mule, there was something of an awkward silence on his end afterwards, but Jackie didn't notice.

In spite of her rookie status, however, it was her fire that kept them going when Quttinirpaaq turned into a bloodbath, a dark symphony of ghosts, bodies and ice played out before an audience too scared to move. Her cerulean blue eyes were alive and angry, fierce, determined, and only grew more so as things went further and further downhill. Jackie was the one who rallied the troops, so to speak. She made speeches. She kept morale from tanking. She was the one who slapped Vincent to talk sense into him. And when they were in the absolute worst of it, he laid down beside her and curled up against her for comfort, the navy blue of her coat the only familiar thing left in the world. He soon learned to shut his eyes and recall the suede smell of it, learned to look into her eyes before making a decision, and knew he had to press on because she was pressing on. Their relationship was the least romantic thing in the world, defined totally in silences and arguments, in moments of desperation and pain. But it was theirs, and she wouldn't have traded it or left him for anything in the world.

Things were bad, but they were not all encompassing or defining, not to her. She kept at her insane theory on catching a ghost, the old one she'd gotten from folk tales, which none of them believed in or could shoot down anymore. Vincent let her go pursue it since his own methods had failed, a horrifying failure he'd never recover from, all of them huddling in a miserable cavern of ice. He would remember for years her hands shaking from the cold as she worked with bright blue kyanite, hollowing out the large gemstone, making a smooth hollow orb inside it. Only when her fingers turned blue did she stop, when everyone agreed it was too much. More than once she warmed her hands up in Vincent's pockets, prompting him to wrap his arms around her. Her boldness didn't bother anyone, especially as time passed, when spirits ran low and there was nothing left to do but hope and try to survive.

The energy released from the kyanite when it came crashing down on a ghost was blue, electric blue, like lightning, a stark contrast to her own warm eyes, but in the reflection of light on her face there was an anger, a fire, a willpower to keep going that scared the other ghosts. When the little orb fell to the ground with one of their own inside it, they fled, and when she took the ghost with her they went undisturbed the entire way home. She walked with a queen's presence through the snow and sleet, sending ghosts scampering back at this human who had power over them. Under the blue light of the moon on the snow, the pitiful remainders of the team made their way back home. They stopped in Iqaluit on the way back, where Vincent bought her an extra blanket, eyes lingering meaningfully on her midsection. They had only a few moments alone with each other, but in that terribly ironic way life had, in the midst of death and ghosts they had conceived life.

Her wedding was attended by her tearful parents, Vincent's aging family, and a ring he refused to show her until the day of the wedding itself. It was bright blue with orange edges, a flarepoint kyanite ring. She could've slapped him for the ham handed symbolism.

Instead, she grabbed him by the collar and kissed him before he'd finished saying 'I do'.


	12. Green

**AN: **So, I disagree with fanon on Kwan being Chinese. Given how Quan is pronounced, I honestly think he's Vietnamese. It's just a difference of opinion. Also, I apologize for the trauma I put Kwan's dad through here. It's definitely R rated in concept, so if anyone wants to skip this chapter that's totally fair.

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Kwan was, actually, a misspelling of the name Quan.

He had been born in Tihn Bien, in the province of An Giang, to an unknown woman and a father who had raised him as best he could for as long as he could. In that kind of poor part of Vietnam, it wasn't uncommon for people to smuggle electronics, drugs or tobacco across the border to Cambodia. But Quan's father hadn't wanted that life for his son, nor did he want that example to be what he passed down to his child. Having lost his own parents in the war years ago, he treasured his son, his sole family, his perfect little boy. And few things are more powerful than a desperate parent's love. So, he set out to find work where he could.

The land was green and lush, crisscrossed by streams and creeks. A man could make a living as a farm hand there if he was willing to put in the work, and he was. The long hours and hard labor didn't bother him. The problem was paying someone to watch after his son while he worked, and that cut into his wages significantly. He had to take up additional work cleaning the farmhouse to make any profit, and every night he came to bed exhausted and woke up long before sunrise to work again. Though the picturesque sky and tall green reeds painted a lovely picture, life was hard, made harder when fewer and fewer places were hiring outside their families anymore. Things became impossible when rumors began to follow him that his son's mother was Cambodian. Unkind words were thrown at him, but his biggest concern was his son's future if everyone knew his mixed origins.

Eventually, he picked up his son and spent his savings on travel to Ho Chi Minh City, where he hoped he could find better work. He did and didn't; he fell in with the wrong crowd but went under an assumed name. There weren't a lot of prostitutes in Ho Chi Minh, but there were enough he could be one without worrying about police crackdowns. It was humiliating, degrading work, which he took up only when he and his son were starving, but that gave him little comfort about the stomach churning acts he had to perform now. The other prostitutes, the women, took to caring for the baby during their off shifts immediately. He had a sense that they understood how his pride was breaking, how low he felt, how there were many nights the only thing that kept him going was his son. When he cried, they made no comments, and when he needed someone to watch his son, he never had a problem finding someone.

In Ho Chi Minh, the only thing that was green was the park. He took his infant son there, letting the little one crawl in verdant grass, watching him with sad, tired eyes. Once trapped in city life, it was hard to escape, and this was no way to raise a son. Bad enough he would live with the threat of his mother's identity hanging over him; now his father was nothing to be proud of, either. He grew despondent and thin, seeing the children of other men and women in his position grow into gangsterhood and criminal behavior, dropping out of school, wasting their futures in this, the most prosperous time in their country's history. And his heart broke for how rapidly he had destroyed his son's future, but there was one last shot.

It took some doing to convince one of his friends to take his son to the orphanage and claim that he was hers. The man who ran it had seen him, he knew him as a prostitute, and there was too much chance that his son would be rejected for having a parent with 'income', scant as it was. He watched his wide eyed son become a blur in the distance in the arms of his best friend, the one Quan sometimes called his mother. The betrayal that they were the ones going to leave him behind was intense, vicious, a stabbing pain. It was guilt on top of guilt. This was what he had resorted to. This was what he had done to his son. That night, he became too depressed for tears, and along with his best friend Sang Thi Van went back to Tihn Bien.

Even though he went back to farm work along with her, they weren't in love, and were never married. They settled in a different town, one by the river, pulling together a life of at least some dignity. He wanted to put the past behind him entirely, let it fall away like green leaves turning brown. There had to be no way of his son knowing what he'd become. Sang wrote the orphanage often, checking up on Quan's status, and it was when the boy was nearly three she came running back from the mail box, beaming. She threw her arms around him happily, holding him close.

Quan had been adopted by visiting Americans, and was going to be taken there. His father shook with relief. America, where none of this legacy could follow him, where college was easier to get into, where people were so much richer. His heart ached for his son across the world, but he knew it was for the best. It made all the suffering, the indignity, the nights that gave him nightmares and burned themselves into his mind all worth it. He had done something right at long last. Now, he could live out his life in satisfaction, knowing that if he died tomorrow, he had accomplished the only thing he'd ever truly had a burning desire to do: save his family from poverty.

Twelve years later, in Amity Park, Kwan used his rudimentary knowledge of Vietnamese from classes his parents had made him take to slowly translate and read the documentation of his adoption. His mother's name meant 'noble poet'; she was unemployed, just like his father, and only nineteen when he had been dropped off. She was from the Nam Dinh Province, with no city or living relatives given. He wondered how she got by. More than that, though, he frowned at the name given for his father. It seemed so familiar. It was impossible to have memories that far back, but he had the faintest recollection of a crowded street, an alley, and a sad man. There was no information other than a name and province for his father. The man was a stranger, but Kwan had the strangest feeling it wasn't because his dad didn't care. He reread the name on the paper again. His father's name was Xu Doan Xahn – struggle and green.

The next day, Kwan felt irresistibly drawn to go to the park, where a strange melancholy overtook him. And when his concerned girlfriend asked why he was crying, he couldn't remember or explain why.


End file.
